Paint yourself red. Go on, do it, sweet melancholia. You are my bane, but also my nectar. Paint yourself red so I can imagine you differently, imbibe you sweet as you can be. I am laying in my bed waiting for you to return. Lay with me, I am comfortable this way, oh blue one.

Is it trite to write about New York these days? I suppose.

But no one's ever ran these streets like I have, taken the same steps as me. But humor me and take these exact steps with me because that's what writing is, isn't it, and that's not trite at all, is it.

No one's ever had to tear off covers at two in the morning and run through a city that's had its magic pulled from underneath it, turning it into an unnavigable maze, journeying toward last vestiges of love seeping into the…

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I work at the movie theater on the local highway. When i butter the popcorn, i remember to shake the bag, to spread the butter evenly. I remember my brother telling me when i was younger to shake the bag that had just come out of the microwave. To spread the butter evenly. He was sitting at the kitchen table and his cup of coffee was half empty. That was the last time i ever saw him.

I walked in to our house to see half used candles on the coffee table that smelled like last Christmas. I walked in to our house to see a recliner half reclined from when I sat in it last which I remember because she sat on my lap and rocked back and forth to the sound of two breaths acting as one. I walked in to our house to see the light I had left on burnt out but which still was glossed over from the sunlight allowed entry through the dusty bay window. I walked in to our house to see…

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A man tells a woman she’s beautiful. She looks at him, all standoffish and whatnot. A man tells the same woman he loves her. She turns her head away. The man looks down into the murky cup of his coffee, black, two Splenda.

He never says it, but he would if he had the guts and if he knew her like he wants to and if he didn’t have to leave the diner when he saw the grounds rise like forgotten wishes in the backwashed coffee and maybe he’d also tell her if his damn Hyatt pen worked and…

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I. Il Padre

He’d lift me, I remember, toward the stars and ground me again. He’d lift me high enough to tickle God’s foot and set me down on the morning dew grass so I could be humbled by the little creatures now tickling my feet and he’d smile the whole damn time.

II. Il Figlio

I cradle our sleeping son and the picture book lies like a wigwam in the open field his brown bed covers make in the setting sun of his nightlight. The hills and valleys…

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The nights I wouldn’t sleep with her she danced instead. She would move the ottoman and the coffee table aside and clear the floor and make sure the carpet was straight and smooth. I would look out the window each time, not knowing why because the view was always the same. But so was she and it didn’t make it any less perfect. At Tchaikovsky’s crescendo, she would pirouette and pause for a moment before sitting next to me. I would turn the radio off and pull a Marlboro out and light it with…

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I remember that when I helped him in the garden as a child, I had trouble distinguishing the rocks from the potatoes. I can still sometimes feel his rough caress when his hand briefly touched mine as we reached for the same object in the dirt. I can still sometimes remember the smooth knives his words made when I made a mistake and put a rock in the potato basket. Beside my son now, I remember his words like church bells in the distance. I scold him ruefully as he picks up a rock and hands…

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If the Dutch had not sailed here five centuries ago, maybe I would be a Florentine painter. If these streets had not been paved and this city had not been erected, maybe I would be a Parisian businessman. If God hadn’t breathed me into being with ephemeral desire, if he hadn’t cast me, like Adam, from his graces, if he hadn’t set my clock in motion only to go live where time did not matter, then maybe I would be a London auctioneer. But I am here now where pigeons look on in gentle…

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